Big Ten coach of the year Tim Miles has once-downtrodden Huskers on a roll

Before two home games this season, a black cat crossed the path of Nebraska coach Tim Miles outside Pinnacle Bank Arena.

Miles can't pinpoint the opponents they played those nights, but he remembers the results.

"I was like, are you kidding me?" Miles recalled on Monday. "But it didn't matter. We still won. The black cat must've had some white on it somewhere, some white paws."

This is a curses-be-damned kind of season for the Cornhuskers, who will enter the Big Ten tournament as the No. 4 seed with a first-round bye Thursday. They'll play the Purdue-Ohio State winner Friday.

The team that upset Wisconsin in the regular-season finale Sunday, sparking a celebration usually reserved for the football team, has quickly become the Big Ten darling. If they keep it up and earn their first NCAA tournament bid since 1998, expect this year's Cinderella to be wearing overalls.

After all, this is the team that was picked to finish last at Big Ten media day in October. The team that started Big Ten play 0-4.

The same program that went just 4-14 in the Big Ten in 2011-12, resulting in Doc Sadler's firing. A team that a year ago, in Miles' first season, earned just five Big Ten wins.

Miles said people used to liken Nebraska to the Cubs or the "old Boston Red Sox" as a team that was destined to lose.

And now?

The Cornhuskers (19-11, 11-7) are on the verge of an NCAA tournament bid that, along with its sparkling new arena, could help take the program to the next level.

Along with regular-season champion Michigan, Nebraska is the Big Ten's hottest team, winning 10 of its last 12. The Huskers hadn't beaten a top-10 program since 1993-94 but have done it twice this season.

Terran Petteway, a transfer from Texas Tech, was a candidate for Big Ten player of the year as the conference scoring leader at 18 points per game. He and Shavon Shields each scored 26 points in a 77-68 victory against the Badgers.

"It's been really easy to do with our players," Miles said of instilling a new culture. "Their view of history is whatever their timeline is on their Twitter account."

But the trending Cornhusker is Miles, named Big Ten coach of the year by his peers Monday.

A work-your-way up type who didn't spring from a legendary coaching tree, Miles' quick wit and happy-go-lucky nature have helped erase the stigma around the perpetually downtrodden basketball program.

"We were ready for a winning culture," said Miles, who started in NAIA and Division II before coaching at Colorado State. "I just didn't feel like any of those preconceived notions existed for us. Your future is what you make of it. Your legacy is what you make of it. We're reinventing Husker basketball."

And it hasn't been with a complicated formula. Just one, he says, that produces good karma.

"It's simply you recruit the right kind of guy," Miles said. "Coach him the right kind of way. Good things happen."